Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Sungood 3BBL Brewery (Hybrid Design) - Design questions

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Sungood 3BBL Brewery (Hybrid Design) - Design questions

    Hi Guys,

    We are in the process of designing a Nano brewery using Sungood 3BBL Stainless Steel Kettles. (120Gal HLT with Herms, 120Gal Mash, 154Gal Boil kettle)

    Unfortunately 3 phase power at our brewery is not available immediately which makes us have serious initial power issues, so we are going to only be able to run two 5500W elements in HLT or two 5500W elements in the Boil kettle. (Each has 4 2" TC elements ports, so we can upgrade to 4 elements later when we have 3 phase power)
    We would not be able to run the 2 Elements in the HLT and 2 Elements in the BK at the same time, as it exceeds our maximum supply when added to pumps and refrigeration.
    I would like to know if anyone has experience with using the 3BBL Sungood kettles with the direct gas heating with their heat shields in place?

    So my design for now has to be hybrid, so we can get up to temperature faster we will heat water in the HLT using gas initially, and heat up the mash water in the BK at the same time also using LPG gas.
    Possibly even use electric and gas at the same time, to heat faster when we require it while circulating the water.
    Then once we are at temperature we will pump the mash water across to the Mash tun from the BK and only run off the two elements, in the HLT and control with PID for mashing and then for sparging.
    For double batching it would also allow us to run the boil in the BK using the elements, while already starting to heat water in the HLT with gas direct fire for the next batch.

    I am concerned on how well direct fire would work with the BK as in the drawings from Sungood the outlet pipe is on the center of the conical base, and will in turn be exposed when using a burner to direct fire?
    Do you think I would have an issue with the BK's pipe being exposed, I can't see if it is 100% exposed or not but it looks to be exposed?
    Any advice on this would be really appreciated, as I plan to circulate the wort during the boil from the center outlet and back into the tangential inlet while we are boiling and don't want to find out this solution would end up burning my wort if I need to use gas direct fire at any stage while the wort is in the boil kettle?

    Then we are looking at using a Chuggar SS Max pump which has a flow rate of 17GPM for our water pump and wort pump.
    Brewers Hardware offers a variety unique and hard to find items to the home and craft brewing markets. Specializing in Tri Clover compatible sanitary fittings and other stainless steel parts and accessories, our selection is constantly expanding.


    The fittings on the Herms are 1" TC, but then on all the other outlets and inlets are 1.5" TC.
    I thoughts are to standardize all our tubing to 1", and then to reduce all 1.5"TC to 1" TC as our pump has a 1" inlet and a 3/4 outlet, so I do not see any point of going larger?
    Do you think 1" would be the right size for 3BBL?
    Or should we be standardizing on 1.5"?

    Any comments or ideas would be a great help?

  • #2
    I built a 2.5bbl system (to match the 110 gal plastic conicals).

    We use 3 phase power for a total of 16500 watts- I use 3 of the ULW 5500 heating elements in the BK only. It is all run off 50 amps 3 phase. It could be wired for 3-30amp single phase circuits though. It may be cheaper to wire it that way until 3 phase is available.

    2 elements are realistically going to be too slow to go to boil. It may add an hour and you may not get a great vigorous boil (dms issues). I've had case where an element goes out during the boil and it takes FOREVER get to a boil. Even now- with 3 elements I keep it at 100% power to maintain a vigorous boil.

    I like electric- it's cheap, quiet, produces less heat inside the brewery. It's a little more work to keep the elements clean- but they are cheap to replace. I think 3bbl is the limit for electric brewing. After that steam makes more sense for my needs and location (ymmv).

    I wouldn't mix gas and electric- then you have to have the exhaust system and get the burner inspected in addition to the electric controller AND gas controller. It sounds like the worst of both options.

    I have a residential tankless that brings in hot water at 130 degrees. I then use the BK to get the water to strike temp. Then transfer to the mash tun via Sparge pipe. I recirc back to the BK and keep the wort at a consistent temp with the heating elements (about 15 gallons of wort in bottom to keep elements covered). I use the BK like a big HERMS setup.

    I have a 120gal BK and a 100gal MT. The Mt is elevated and tips to dump the grain right into trash cans. The added benefit- it gravity drains great back into the BK to recirc. Only one pump is needed for the whole system (which I found out after a pump stopped working mid brew).

    This way I only need one controller and one set of elements. It work well- I can brew a batch in less than 6 hours from grain milling to clean up. But you can't overlap double brews. The cost to brew is insignificant compared to my walk-in cooler!

    I use 3/4" silicon hose and most of the fittings are 1" tri clover. I use the March nano brew pump with the poly sulfide head- works just fine. I actually had to get a smaller pump originally because it was collapsing the grain bed in the mash tun.

    Pumping speed is not an issue. You can only Sparge and lauter so fast and you can only chill and transfer so fast.

    Spent grain is about 2 full trash cans worth- so consider if you have to manually shovel it out. 3 bbl is about as big as I think you can manage with building a tippy dump to make life easier.

    Good luck


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    JC McDowell
    Bandit Brewing Co.- 3bbl brewery and growing
    Darby, MT- population 700
    OPENED Black Friday 2014!

    Comment


    • #3
      Hi JC,

      Thanks for the detailed response.
      Unfortunately our power situation does not allow us to put three elements single phase don't have enough power, only have 60A single phase. We will get 80A or 100A 3 phase at a later date when available.
      This is why we have to go through the mission of putting in both gas and electric.
      Another issue we have in South Africa is we have load shedding which is an inturuption in our power supply for 2 hours so the gas backup is a must for us unfortunately. We will have to control the gas manually for now by hand and if it becomes and issue we will put in gas controllers but this would mainly be used to reach a temprature, I would guess and hope that the two elements would be able to maintain the temprature or boil, once gas has helped us get there.

      I must admit I have not allowed for an exhaust for the gas as yet, will need to look at this?
      The Sungood heat shields look like this:
      This Stout Tanks 3 bbl brew kettle has many professional grade features including a Thermowell, Tangential Inlet, Sight Glass, and Sloped Bottom. We Have Options for your Nano Brewery. Start Shopping brew kettles.

      Any idea what size burners would be required for the HLT and then the BK, and what size vent I would need?

      We will have to shovel the spent grain out by hand through the bottom manway, I don't see this an issue and is what we expected. I don't think we could tip this tank as it stands on legs and would be too large to manage.

      We planning on having a 9 gallon wort grant to avoid the grain from collapsing, as we will not be able to gravity feed into the boil kettle, so the wort is gravity fed to the wort grant and then pumped across to the BK.

      Thanks for the info on the piping, so us using 1" should be all good, can we use unreinforced silicon tubing or will the tubing collapse from the pressure of the pump?

      Interesting idea on using the BK as a means to keep you wort at temprature, like the idea.

      We are excited to get this design completed, almost there just working on the gas equipment now.
      And need to finalize the electric design, keeping flexable to expand when 3 phase is available.
      Lots to think about!

      Thanks again.

      Spencer
      Last edited by SpencerBizzell; 08-31-2015, 11:32 PM.

      Comment


      • #4
        You're going to need two pumps then- silicone hose should be fine- those nano pumps don't put out enough pressure to blow the hoses.

        In your case- why not bite the bullet and go all gas?

        I have no idea on size of burners.

        Good luck

        Jc


        Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
        JC McDowell
        Bandit Brewing Co.- 3bbl brewery and growing
        Darby, MT- population 700
        OPENED Black Friday 2014!

        Comment


        • #5
          you can do it with 3@ 5500w

          not ideal but you can get 110 gal of wort to boil with 11000 watts. I have 3 @5500 in my stout tanks set up but for awhile I was only rolling with 2 and it worked. Over 110 gal and it was a struggle, 100 gal is a better max. There isnt hardly any boil-off with that little power. it may take you about 2 hours to get a boil and it wont be rolling, but you can still make some awesome beer until you get your electric upgraded!

          Good Luck
          Matt
          D14 Brewery & Pub
          facebook.com/d14beer

          Comment


          • #6
            3 phase fix

            Have you looked into putting in a add-a-phase that will allow for the 3rd phase? www.ronkelectrical.com

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by J.Megatun View Post
              Have you looked into putting in a add-a-phase that will allow for the 3rd phase? www.ronkelectrical.com
              You use phase converters only where you have 3 phase motor loads. Any three phase resistive load like heaters can be rewired for single phase, but you still need the power, and adding a third phase via a converter doesn't add any power. There may be a couple large heaters out there that are strictly three phase, but every one I've seen has jumpers that allow you to rewire it in various ways. 60 amps single phase at 230 volts is 13.8 KW, and that's all you can have. Electrical codes in the US prevent you from exceeding 80% of the branch circuit capacity, so that would be about 11 KW at 60A. I'm assuming SA is 230V...

              Sometimes you can rewire heaters for various voltages, which could lower the effective wattage. But I agree with using hybrid direct fire in this case; you need lots of reliable power with an all electrical brewhouse.

              Regards,
              Mike Sharp

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by SpencerBizzell View Post
                Hi Guys,

                We are in the process of designing a Nano brewery using Sungood 3BBL Stainless Steel Kettles. (120Gal HLT with Herms, 120Gal Mash, 154Gal Boil kettle)

                Unfortunately 3 phase power at our brewery is not available immediately which makes us have serious initial power issues, so we are going to only be able to run two 5500W elements in HLT or two 5500W elements in the Boil kettle. (Each has 4 2" TC elements ports, so we can upgrade to 4 elements later when we have 3 phase power)
                We would not be able to run the 2 Elements in the HLT and 2 Elements in the BK at the same time, as it exceeds our maximum supply when added to pumps and refrigeration.
                I would like to know if anyone has experience with using the 3BBL Sungood kettles with the direct gas heating with their heat shields in place?

                So my design for now has to be hybrid, so we can get up to temperature faster we will heat water in the HLT using gas initially, and heat up the mash water in the BK at the same time also using LPG gas.
                Possibly even use electric and gas at the same time, to heat faster when we require it while circulating the water.
                Then once we are at temperature we will pump the mash water across to the Mash tun from the BK and only run off the two elements, in the HLT and control with PID for mashing and then for sparging.
                For double batching it would also allow us to run the boil in the BK using the elements, while already starting to heat water in the HLT with gas direct fire for the next batch.

                I am concerned on how well direct fire would work with the BK as in the drawings from Sungood the outlet pipe is on the center of the conical base, and will in turn be exposed when using a burner to direct fire?
                Do you think I would have an issue with the BK's pipe being exposed, I can't see if it is 100% exposed or not but it looks to be exposed?
                Any advice on this would be really appreciated, as I plan to circulate the wort during the boil from the center outlet and back into the tangential inlet while we are boiling and don't want to find out this solution would end up burning my wort if I need to use gas direct fire at any stage while the wort is in the boil kettle?

                Then we are looking at using a Chuggar SS Max pump which has a flow rate of 17GPM for our water pump and wort pump.
                Brewers Hardware offers a variety unique and hard to find items to the home and craft brewing markets. Specializing in Tri Clover compatible sanitary fittings and other stainless steel parts and accessories, our selection is constantly expanding.


                The fittings on the Herms are 1" TC, but then on all the other outlets and inlets are 1.5" TC.
                I thoughts are to standardize all our tubing to 1", and then to reduce all 1.5"TC to 1" TC as our pump has a 1" inlet and a 3/4 outlet, so I do not see any point of going larger?
                Do you think 1" would be the right size for 3BBL?
                Or should we be standardizing on 1.5"?

                Any comments or ideas would be a great help?
                I know this is an old quote but how does not having 3 phase power limit a person to 2 elements? I have the same sungood system and am going to use 4 5500w elements in each kettle as well as a rims,

                I have designed the panel to be powered from 2 60a gfci breakers and 2 elements will run off each circuit (46 amps at full power). Since there's no need for both the hlt and MT to be heating at the same time it should work fine, I also have one of the rims wired on a NO/NC relay so when the rims is turned on the HLT elements will go from all four being active to only 3... I can also run pumps from this without power issues. I'm using a new software I helps beta test called "Brucontrol" (www.brucontrol.com) to run everything off an arduino mega.

                EDIT*** should have read the whole post before commenting.. I now see they are limited to only 60A total... Wow that is a problem.
                Last edited by augiedoggy; 01-31-2018, 06:41 AM.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by rdcpro View Post
                  You use phase converters only where you have 3 phase motor loads. Any three phase resistive load like heaters can be rewired for single phase, but you still need the power, and adding a third phase via a converter doesn't add any power. There may be a couple large heaters out there that are strictly three phase, but every one I've seen has jumpers that allow you to rewire it in various ways. 60 amps single phase at 230 volts is 13.8 KW, and that's all you can have. Electrical codes in the US prevent you from exceeding 80% of the branch circuit capacity, so that would be about 11 KW at 60A. I'm assuming SA is 230V...

                  Sometimes you can rewire heaters for various voltages, which could lower the effective wattage. But I agree with using hybrid direct fire in this case; you need lots of reliable power with an all electrical brewhouse.

                  Regards,
                  Mike Sharp
                  My understanding of the 80% rule is it only applies if the device will be running at full amp draw for 3 hrs or longer continuosly?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I just wanted to follow up that I did end up going with 4 5500w elements and with my single phase power my control panel needed a minimum of 100a to do this. (I went with 2 60a gfci circuits ).

                    That said I concur that you can get away with 3 elements but it does take longer. I have a rims and designed it so when the rims elements are active, one of the 4 HLT elements are automatically disabled to keep the amp draw under 100a. Technically I did not need to do this but I felt more comfortable with this and also may amp draw meters only register and show up to 100amps in current draw. I also have maechanical relays preventing both the boil kettle and HLT kettles from heating at the same time (which is never needed unless back to back brewing is being done)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Kettle & HLT Loads

                      I ended up with getting a used-only-once 3 bbl Stout system from a brewery in planning that didn't make it. The BK and HLT have 4 6kw 3-Phase elements each. We ended up with getting a 3 phase open delta service from the power company since they only had to hang one additional transformer. That really dropped my planned brewery loads from the brewhouse to the mill and the planned chiller. Each 6kw element went from 25 amps down to 14.4 amps so the brewhouse only draws 115 amps with every element on and that will almost never happen. I agree in that I would avoid natural gas or propane if you can just to avoid the ventillation requirements.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X